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Friday, May 2, 2014

[Rant] Decided that I should get rid of the Silver Arrow SB-E Extreme cooler

In a previous post I wrote how I bought A-DATA XPG V2 16GB memory kit. Since the heatsink of these sticks is tall, I cannot fit them underneath my current CPU cooler, the Silver Arrow SB-E extreme. You might wonder why I bought these sticks in the first place. That was because the low profile sticks were so expensive, that I could still be able to spend less even if I change the cooler to a closed loop water cooler like the Corsair H100i. And don't forget that these sticks run at 2400MHz, albeit CL11. Plus, don't forget I still have my Antec Kuhler 620 AIO water cooler with me as well.

Just forget about compatibility with Mini-ITX boards for a second. The Silver Arrow is not compatible even with Micro ATX motherboards. It not only blocks the first DIMM slot, but also the top most PCI-E slot which is always the one connected to the CPU with 16 lanes. It doesn’t mean that you cannot plug the DIMMs to DIMM1 and DIMM3 instead of DIMM0 and DIMM2 and the graphics card to the 2nd PCI-E x16 (wired at x8) slot, but that’s not optimal, right? However, it could be cheaper than replacing the cooler.

Still, I think the best thing for me to do right now is to get rid of the Silver Arrow.

Of course, the only place that I know I can sell the cooler is Rakuten Auctions. Thus I posted it as a new exhibit for a reasonable opening price of JPY5,000. Perhaps one might think that the price is too high. But I think this cooler deserves at least that much. It's one of the best air coolers in the world, if not the best (check the PCPerspective Review here). It is definitely not quiet at its peak fan speeds, but you don't really have to run it at full fan speed all the time. Even at a relatively low 1200RPM, the CPU temps are within 5°C.

The following is the entry on Rakuten Auctions. (Click on the image to go to link)

If I can find someone who’s willing to buy the Silver Arrow, then everything will be perfect. I will buy a new cooler – depending on the case that I’m going to get, but for now I can survive with the Antec Kuhler 620. Who knows, I might end up sticking to it after all – depending on the case of course. If the case allows installing a dual width radiator, then I would buy one.